Dealing with customer complaints on the phone and email

Situation:

Clients (international and local) have a problem with the software or discover a bug in the system and call through to have it resolved.

Support staff can general not solve the problem on the spot. Problem resolution take 3-5 more interactions (call or mail) and sometimes it is necessary to escalate the problem to the developers in the US, and hand the topic over to them.

Customers general have more subject matter expertise than the support function. (Customers are immerses in the business end of the software capabilities

Problems:

Customers get impatient, emotional, and sometimes threatening.

Support staff need to be extremely positive minded to do the job, which is essentially all about dealing with problems

Bad service can lead to customers being very upset with the software (and the support they receive) which can lead in customers leaving

Solution:

Collect the data which enables us to analyse “a good response” and “a bad response”. This should be done by either recording the calls, or the support staff writing down the initial statements of the call and what language was used. In addition to this, a collection of emails would be useful as well.

Run a 2 day programme to work through the process of dealing with a customer complaint effectively

Build in a simple tracking process, which gives the support heads the possibility to see what has changed, and discuss the changes with their people.

Bigger picture:

Retention and fluctuation. The support staff must be very valuable in the knowledge that they have, and their position must be an obvious pool of potential talent for other areas of the organisation, purely from a knowledge perspective.

Its possible that there has been an escalation in the number of complaints, or that a number of key support staff have recently left Motivation.

I am assuming the seminar will also be a motivation tool to make people feel good about what they are doing and how they are doing it.